Family background and the decision to provide for old age: a siblings approach

The Riester pensions in Germany provide helpful evidence to better understand the determinants of and the barriers to the demand for old-age provision products. The paper argues that families are of key importance in the decision making process to buy such a private pension. Families do not only shape the way we make our financial decisions they can also be a source for cost-effective and reliable information. Depending on certain characteristics some individuals can process this information more easily. Results confirm that individual characteristics, in particular income and education, as well as family characteristics are correlated with Riester ownership. Adding a dynamic element to the analysis I find strong sequential correlations in Riester ownership between siblings. However, these correlations become weaker over time as the number of Riester owners in other social circles grows. Once a critical mass has been reached, positive spillovers can create a social multiplier leading to a higher coverage with private pensions in the future.     

Financial market lobbies and pension reform

We develop a model in which firms in the financial market lobby the government to lower compulsory contributions to the public pension system. Firms lobby in order to increase demand from households for their old-age savings products. We conclude with a comparison of two major pension reforms in Europe exemplifying the influence of financial market lobbies on pension policies.     

Retirement expectations, pension reforms, and their impact on private wealth accumulation

We estimate the effect of pension reforms on households' expectations of retirement outcomes and private wealth accumulation decisions exploiting a decade of intense Italian pension reforms as a source of exogenous variation in expected pension wealth. The Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a large random sample of the Italian population, elicits expectations of the age at which workers expect to retire and of the ratio of pension benefits to pre-retirement income between 1989 and 2002. We find that workers have revised expectations in the direction suggested by the reform and that there is substantial offset between private wealth and perceived pension wealth, particularly by workers that are better informed about their pension wealth.     

Corporate financial structure and the funding of private pension plans

One strand of the literature on the employment contract focuses on the role of the contract in the efficient sharing of risk between capitalists and workers. One way capitalists can shift risk to workers is to provide part of workers' remuneration in the form of an unfunded, deferred pension. Since bonds, in the event of bankruptcy or voluntary termination, are typically senior to unfunded pension liabilities, capitalists can also affect their risk by altering the firm's debt-to-equity ratio. These observations suggest that corporate financial structure and the employment contract are interdependent. The paper has two major goals. The first is to take a step towards integrating the theory of corporate financial structure with that of the employment contract. The second is to investigate possible consequences of legislation which regulates the funding of private pensions.     

Savings and pensions in The Netherlands

We describe the distribution of private wealth of Dutch households over the life cycle and relate this to the size of individual entitlements to pay-as-you-go social security benefits and funded pension benefits. We also investigate saving motives and find that saving for old age plays only a minor role. Precautionary motives play some role, but in view of the very extensive social safety net it does not seem likely that precaution is an important factor in saving decisions. Altogether, the data are consistent with the view that an extensive social safety net and generous old age income provisions reduce the need to accumulate private wealth.     

Self-Enforcing Intergenerational Social Contracts for Pareto Improving Pollution Mitigation

We consider, in an overlapping generations model with an environmental externality, a scheme of contracts between any two successive generations. Under each contract, agents of the young generation invest a share of their labor income in pollution mitigation in exchange for a transfer in the second period of their lives. The transfer is financed in a pay-as-you-go manner by the next young generation. Different from previous work we assume that the transfer is granted as a subsidy to capital income rather than lump sum. We show that the existence of a contract which is Pareto improving over the situation without contract for any two generations requires a sufficiently high level of income. In a steady state with social contracts in each period, the pollution stock is lower compared to a steady state without contracts. Analytical and numerical analysis of the dynamics under Nash bargaining suggests that under reasonable conditions, also steady state income and welfare are higher. Delaying the implementation of a social contract for too long or imposing a contract with too low mitigation can be costly: Net income may inevitably fall below the threshold in finite time so that Pareto improving mitigation is no longer possible and the economy converges to a steady state with high pollution stock and low income and welfare. In the second part of the paper, we study a game theoretic setup, taking into account that credibly committing to a contract might not be possible. We show that with transfers granted as a subsidy to capital income, there exist mitigation transfer schemes which are both Pareto improving and give no generation an incentive to deviate from any of its contracts even in a dynamically efficient economy. Social contracts coexist with private savings.     

Uncertain Pension Income and Household Saving

This paper investigates the relationship between household saving and pensions, and estimates both the displacement effect of pensions on private saving and the precautionary saving effect due to uncertainty in pension income. I estimate the savings equation implied by a simple life‐cycle model featuring income uncertainty using survey data for Dutch households, with subjective expectations on pension benefits and uncertainty. Exploiting exogenous variation due to pension fund performance, I find that households save significantly more due to uncertainty in pension income. Not controlling for uncertainty biases the estimated displacement effect of pensions on private savings towards zero.     

新农保与农村低收入家庭贫困脆弱性*——基于精准扶贫背景和不同贫困标准

为考察新农保在精准扶贫时期能否降低农村低收入家庭的贫困脆弱性，本文利用2014—2018年家庭追踪调查（CFPS）数据，基于2 300元/年和每人每天32美元两类不同贫困标准衡量的贫困脆弱性指标，采用双向固定效应模型和工具变量法进行实证检验。研究发现，总体而言，缴费参与新农保对农村低收入家庭的贫困脆弱性具有显著削弱作用，但领取新农保在一定程度上加剧了农村低收入家庭的贫困脆弱程度。根据领保状态的分阶段分析发现，缴费参与新农保和缴费参保人数增加对未领保家庭和领保家庭的贫困脆弱性都具有显著改善作用，但领取新农保和领保人数对贫困脆弱性没有显著影响。异质性分析表明，缴费参与新农保可以改善健康成员家庭的贫困脆弱性，对无储蓄家庭和无借贷家庭的贫困脆弱程度具有显著缓解作用。机制检验表明，缴费参与新农保可以通过提高家庭生产性固定资产和减少代际转移，进而缓解家庭贫困脆弱性程度，而领取新农保则通过增加子女对老人的经济支持而加剧家庭贫困脆弱程度。     

养老保险改革对家庭储蓄率的影响:中国的经验证据

本文利用1995年和1999年城镇住户调查数据(CHIPS)分析中国养老保险制度改革对家庭储蓄率的影响,从一个新的角度解释20世纪90年代中后期中国家庭储蓄率上升的原因。1995—1997年间中国对城镇企业职工进行的养老保险制度改革使得企业职工养老金财富发生变化,这种养老金财富的变化具有外生性,因而这项改革可以作为一项政策实验用来识别养老金财富对家庭储蓄率的影响。研究结果表明:中国的储蓄行为可以由生命周期模型解释;养老金财富对于家庭储蓄存在显著的替代效应,这一效应平均为-0.4—-0.3左右;但不同家庭这种替代效应有明显差异,户主年龄在35—49岁的家庭,储蓄率会显著受到养老金财富的影响,其他家庭这一影响并不显著。     

THE PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON PENSION POLICY HOUSEHOLD SURVEY 1979: NET WEALTH DISTRIBUTIONS BY TYPE AND AGE FOR THE UNITED STATES

A household survey was done for the U.S. President's Commission on Pension Policy (1979-81). This paper reports on the net wealth of families in the United States for the year 1979, the first wave of the survey. The survey was begun in September 1979 and was a two-wave, nationwide random sample of households in the United States. The survey instrument gathered information on income, wealth, labor supply, participation in pension plans, vesting status, entitlement to various benefits, attitudinal views on retirement, social security wealth, and individual demographic characteristics. Details of the survey methodology are reported. A response rate of sixty-two percent was achieved among the 6,384 dwelling units in the first wave. Imputations are made to calculate the wealth embodied in private and public employee-based pensions. Included in this valuation is an adjustment for expected vesting status in the pension plan. Net wealth is examined by type and age of the head of household. The average net wealth of the family is $53,956, and the average value of retirement wealth is $3,281 which comprises about 5 to 6 percent of net wealth. The striking changes in the portfolio of net wealth are depicted over the cross-section of age cohorts. The oldest age cohort, 65 and over, is found to have for retirement wealth the lowest frequency of ownership, the lowest proportion of their portfolio in this form of wealth, and the second to lowest average value.     

The German Savings Puzzle

Germany has one of the most generous public pension and health insurance systems of the world, yet private savings are high and remain positive until old age, even for most low income households. How can we explain what we might want to term the “German savings puzzle”? We provide a complicated answer that combines historical facts with capital market imperfections, housing, tax and pension policies. The first part of the paper describes how German households save, based on a synthetic panel of four cross sections of the German Income and Expenditure Survey (“Einkommens- und Verbrauchsstichproben”) collected between 1978 and 1993. The second part links saving behaviour with public policy, notably tax and pension policy.     

Public Pensions: To What Extent Do They Account for Swedish Wealth Inequality?

Sweden's distribution of disposable income is very even, with a Gini coefficient of just 0.31. Yet its wealth distribution is extremely unequal, with a Gini coefficient of 0.79. Moreover, Swedish wealth inequality is, to a large extent, driven by the large fraction of households with zero or negative wealth. In this paper, we investigate to what extent the redistributive public pension scheme is responsible for these features of the data. To address this problem, we study the properties of two overlapping generations economies with uninsurable idiosyncratic risk. The first has a pension system modeled on the actual system; the second has no public pension scheme at all. Our findings support the view that the public pension scheme is, to a large extent, responsible for the features of the data that we focus on. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: E13, D31, H55.     

Risk Sharing and Information in Village Economies

Arrangements for achieving efficient risk-sharing vary depending on the information available to agents in the economy. The usual Euler equation restricts efficient allocations in an economy which obeys the permanent income hypothesis, while efficient allocations in an economy with private information and long-term contracts satisfy a symmetric restriction, but not the Euler equation. Full insurance arrangements are unique in that they satisfy both restrictions.
We look at an environment in which it seems likely that long-term contracts play a role in mitigating the effects of private information: three village economies in South India. The evidence that consumption allocations satisfy the private information restriction is quite strong for households in two of the three villages; the evidence for the third village suggests that while consumption for some households satisfies the private information restrictions, other households' consumption obey the permanent income hypothesis.     

To defer or not defer? UK state pension and work decisions in a lifecycle model

The UK state pension (which depends only on age) includes an option to defer take up which yields either a subsequent lump sum or higher weekly pension. We analyse the joint decisions on pension deferral and intertemporal labour supply/participation in a lifecycle setting. We show that deferral is purely a financial decision, but the impact of deferral on work decisions depends on preferences, wage rates, non-labour income and initial wealth. To exactly characterize this, we use a quasilinear utility function and provide calibrated simulations. We also discuss the choice between a lump sum or increased weekly pension.     

AUCTIONS,EX POST COMPETITION AND PRICES: THE EFFICIENCY OF PUBLIC‐PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS*

ABSTRACT ** : Using an original database concerning 1102 French local public authorities in 2001, we explore the relationships between prices charged by private operators in water contracts and ex post competition. We show that prices charged in contracts in which operators are in a monopoly situation throughout the duration of the contract, are not affected by a ‘competition effect’ between private operators. However, a competition effect between private operators and public management appears to be crucial in explaining prices combined with a ‘termination effect’, reflecting the fact that the contract is close to being renewed, and hence re‐auctioned.     

中国城镇家庭财产水平研究:基于行为的视角

本文首先提出了一个各种因素影响家庭财产水平的理论框架。然后通过对奥尔多投资研究中心2007年"城市投资者行为调查问卷"数据的处理和实证分析,估算了中国城镇居民的财产函数,重点考察了户主的主观行为特征在财产积累过程中的重要作用。本文发现:户主投资参与度与风险偏好度的提高有利于家庭财产水平的增加;与低收入或者经济相对落后地区的家庭相比,对高收入或者经济发达地区的家庭来说,投资参与度与风险偏好度对家庭财产水平的积极影响更显著一些。最后,针对政府如何促进居民财产水平的提升,本文给出了相关的政策建议。     

A SAVINGS SUBSIDISATION SYSTEM IN A MODEL OF ENDOGENOUS FERTILITY AND ENDOGENOUS GROWTH: AN EXTENSION OF WIGGER (1999)

Population ageing is now an established demographic characteristic of many economies. Economists working in the endogenous growth theory tradition have sought to model the relationship between public pensions, financed on a 'Pay-As-You-Go' basis, and the growth in per capita incomes. The resultant intergenerational wealth redistribution from young to older people seems to decrease private savings, diminish capital accumulation, and lower the growth of per capita incomes. The underlying transmission mechanism appears to be a crowding out effect in private capital markets contingent upon the introduction of public pension systems. A growing literature exists on the interrelationships between public pension schemes, fertility rates and endogenous growth. Following Wigger's (1999) pioneering overlapping generations endogenous growth model, we extend this model to examine the effects of a savings subsidisation system on the rate of per capita income growth, fertility and voluntary intrafamily wealth transfers, where parents view children both as an insurance good and a consumption good. Moreover, children care about the consumption levels of their parents. An increase in contributions to a savings subsidised public pension scheme will crowd out private intergenerational transfers from the young to the old and thereby negate the usefulness of children as an insurance good.     

不同养老保障机制与家庭储蓄率——基于世代交叠模型的实证研究

目前,我国的养老保障机制采用以社会养老保险为基础的多渠道养老保险机制,家庭成员赡养、个人金融投资和养老保险就成为了三种主要方式。这一结论已经得到了学术界的广泛认可,然而我国不同养老渠道之间的比例和关系尚缺乏实证研究。家庭自主的金融资产投资、家庭成员之间的赡养效果还没有得到充分的检验。文章基于2008年和2009年的中国家庭追踪调查(CFPS)数据,首次运用2005年政策调整后的数据进行实证研究,对我国养老金财富、个人金融投资以及家庭成员赡养率之间的关系进行了分析研究。文章根据传统的世代交叠模型,针对现有数据,建立了一个三期世代交叠模型,然后分析了不同渠道养老保险收入对家庭储蓄率的影响。研究结果表明,基本养老金财富与个人金融投资对非退休人群的储蓄有显著的负向影响,退休者的储蓄率主要受家庭成员赡养影响,并且呈负相关的关系。     

Unreformed or Hybrid? Accounting for Pension Arrangements Diversity in the EU

EU27 pension systems are diverse and different from textbook ideal-type. They are hybrids because they combine public and private pension features. Over a century, public and private pensions have been designed and reformed simultaneously. We examine how the history of those reforms can explain the emergence of existing hybrid pension arrangements.